


far away, the thudding of the guns

by smithens



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Epistolary, Friendship/Love, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-World War I, Thomas Barrow Processing His Emotions, Trauma, World War I
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:47:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 20,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21723229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smithens/pseuds/smithens
Summary: Thomas, during and after the Front.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Edward Courtenay, Thomas Barrow/Original Male Character(s), Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 101
Kudos: 133





	1. November, 1927

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marschallin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marschallin/gifts).



> as those of you who follow me on Tumblr may know, i've spent some time lately talking about how much of a disservice I feel was done to Thomas after season 2 regarding the fact that he's literally a war veteran, so here is a fic to give him some of what he didn't get in canon.
> 
> this takes place in the same universe as [hey, i just met you (and this is crazy)](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557004). seeing as the tone, narrative style, and focus is going to be completely different here, this is not a part of that series.
> 
> title from siegfried sassoon's "The Death Bed".

November 30, 1927

Dear Mr Ellis,

Your letter gave me plenty to think about. That's why it's taken me three weeks to sit down and write you back. Sorry.

I think I'm finally at a place where I've forgotten about the war more often than not. No one else still at Downton Abbey was a part of it, it's been only me since '22, not that it ever came up before then. Not the sort of thing we talk about around the dining table now, either. I'm glad of that, really. People forget I was there and it gets exhausting reminding them.

When I'm reminded myself it comes back, though, it always does. Armistice Day, same as you. And there's the memorial in Downton. Sometimes I pass by it and I'm just fine, other times I go out of my way to avoid seeing it, which is difficult given it's right in the centre of everything. It's the same with the cottage hospital.

I don't blame you for waiting until after Christmas to join up. I don't think anyone in his right mind would, looking back. It's not as if you waited to be called up, though mind you I wouldn't blame you for that either. 

Since you asked, I volunteered the day they announced it. Figured I'd join up in the medical corps before they could call me up to be in the army and I wouldn't have to hurt or be hurt by anyone, be holed up in a hospital away from the front lines. Couldn't be worse than domestic service, right? I was about to be sacked at Downton, not for the first or last time. I'm not about to get into that in a letter, seeing as you know it all turned out okay in the end. By which I mean my job, not the war. I say this just to be clear that I didn't have some noble delusion of serving England, I was looking out for myself. It makes no difference when you enlist if you haven't the right reasons for doing it, though I agree with you too that there aren't any right reasons. I think yours were closer to them than mine, though. None of us knew any better than anyone else. Not even the conscientious objectors, in my opinion. 

Anyway, and this is horrible, but I was young and stupid, I was thankful for a way out. Germans couldn't have chosen a better time, far as I was concerned. And you know what they say, war is its own reference, so as soon as the thing was over I could find work somewhere else and put Downton Abbey behind me. Again, obviously that is not what happened.

All I remember about the day of is the Crawleys were having a garden party, and it was sunny, so a very special occasion, and then Lord Grantham had a telegram that put a damper on all of it. Bloody miserable playing footman the rest of the day, I can tell you that much. Not that I need to. It doesn't sound like playing valet at Balmoral Castle was any better. You really climbed the whole ladder, didn't you? You must have dressed every man in the Royal Family by now.

So I got to be one of the first men in the trenches. 

This is horrible, too, but even though it was hell and I scarpered first chance I got, I think that was the first time in my life I ever felt like I mattered or was important to anybody. I was a stretcher bearer. I heard "thank you" more times in a day than I had in years. I loved that part. I don't know that I'll ever feel that way again. Not that I want the rest of it, only I remember being twenty three and straight out of spending all day waiting on people who had no idea how dependent on me they really were and pretending I was wallpaper, and then on the Front men would look me in the eye and say "thank God you're here." The same men, even, or the same kind of men. When else was a son of an Earl ever going to say thank you to someone like me? Never. Made me feel like the ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ King. 

Shouldn't say that in a letter to you, of all people, should I? I'll smudge that out before sending this.

The point is, what I did meant something. I hadn't been a Private for two months before I was promoted. I was good at the dirty work, but I was also good at getting on with people. No one at Downton would have believed I was capable of that. Maybe it's wrong to be proud that I was, but keeping blokes company in their final moments was the least I could do, and if we didn't know for certain they were going to die then it was up to me to keep them fighting, because I was the one who was there, wasn't I? That's what I figured. Not everyone could do it like I could, though. Got a sense that I mattered for doing it.

Even in my nightmares I matter. It's always that I'm the only one left over the top and I'm carrying a stretcher by myself, which because it's a dream is never the actual problem, but it's just me and I have to save the whole battalion, and everyone dies as soon as I get there, one by one.

It happened in real life all the time, getting to someone and they're dead already. Or they died right when we got to safety. 

That's the thing though isn't it. The more people count on me the more I can disappoint them. I already knew that, but the war made it clear. Sometimes there really was nothing I could do. Most of the time, actually, even after I left the Front. Lady Sybil, she was the youngest Crawley daughter, was in the VAD and I remember one night at the cottage hospital, where I did home service until they made Downton Abbey a convalescent home, shortly after this. One night something terrible had happened and I think we both felt responsible for it. I still feel responsible for it. But I bawled my eyes out and she didn't shed a tear, which was the worst part of it, she was so torn up she couldn't even cry, and we just kept saying to each other over and over "there was nothing you could have done," and "you did everything you could." She started it. We didn't believe it about ourselves, neither of us, not to presume about a Lady or anything but it was obvious that she felt like I did. But I believed it about her, and I like to think she believed it about me. Just how these things go, you can't let someone else take the blame. Before the war I think I was incapable of that. I blamed someone else for everything. And don't get me wrong, mind you I blamed myself, too, still do and always have, but when I was a boy I blamed other people at the same time. For this I couldn't, though. I couldn't blame Lady Sybil and I couldn't even blame the man who I felt allowed it, because maybe he wouldn't have if I'd done more to make him see what was happening. Like I was the only one responsible for it and it was all down to me. Selfish, really, when you look at it that way. 

That was ten years ago this spring.

Reading that back over I doubt that it will make much sense to you. Sorry for that. The thing is I've never told anyone any of this before. You know more about me than anyone else does.

Odd that we talked about everything except the war when you were here, isn't it? It's a good conversation starter when one meets a man his age, these days, if you don't know what to do or say: what did you do, when did you start, where did you serve, and then you and the bloke go on from there to the things worth chatting about, if there are any. Usually there aren't, in my experience, but even so war talk can keep a chap occupied for ages, especially this time of year. I suppose that's because no matter what else we've all got it in common. Sometimes I think it's the only thing I do have in common with other blokes, is I spent two years mucking about in France hating everything I laid eyes on. Ye are all one in Lord Kitchener.

But you and I have never had that problem to begin with, have we? 

As always: I am reminded of you whenever I take out my pocket watch. I am reminded of you whenever I go to the post office, whether I use the telephone or not. I am reminded of you whenever I walk through the stableyard at night. I am reminded of you whenever visiting staff go through the bloody backdoor as they're meant to.

And I miss you every time. Look in on your parents soon, why don't you?

Ever yours,

T

P.S. I'm keeping your letter with my medals. I thought you might want to know that.


	2. October, 1918

"What about you, Sergeant? What's got your name on it for when the war's over?"

" _If_ it's over," says Lieutenant Gable. The man's been in a mood all day and there's nothing anyone can do about it, although he did perk up when Lady Edith stopped by.

Wouldn't it be nice if the mere sight of a clean and well-dressed woman (everyone does call her plain, after all) was enough to cheer him up, himself.

They all ignore him, naturally. Every day there's news of another armistice; it's only a matter of time.

Or, anything to help them sleep at night, right?

"Oh, I've got plans," Thomas says, and the grumbles as he lays his cards down are so satisfying he almost forgets to be irked. He collects his pieces and taps ash off of his cigarette, acts like he doesn't see the expectant glances all around him.

"Back to service?" 

"Not if I can help it."

"Dismal vocation, isn't it?"

Something in Captain Kendall's tone makes it feel like a personal insult.

"Has its benefits," he drawls. "Just not for me anymore."

"Where you headed, then? Hospital work?"

"Him and every other jobless Joe out of the medical corps — you can't all be orderlies, can you?"

"Don't recall saying I wanted to."

As if he'd want to spend the rest of his life as he does now, looking after the sick and dying day in and day out. No thanks, he's bloody miserable enough as it is.

"Anything's an improvement from service, isn't it?"

This from a man who almost certainly grew up in a house with help. 

" — they may give you room and board and all of that, but at what bloody cost? No time off, no privacy," hardly a change from how Thomas grew up, that, but then, none of these men could ever be expected to understand how the other half lives, "don't even let blokes marry, do they?" this being a benefit, "…I could never do it, me."

"Well, you'll never have to, Captain, will you, seeing as you were a bloody banker?"

_Thank you, Gable._

His apathy is good for one thing, at least. Never misses a chance to shut someone up.

"There are worse things than domestic work," says Lieutenant Harris. Nice bloke. Was a schoolteacher, but seeing as he's now deaf in one ear and missing half a leg he's probably in a quandary same as the rest of them. "Digging ditches, for example."

"He'd have to be able to hold a shovel for that."

_Fuck you, Gable._

"I've got plans," Thomas repeats, and then he takes one last drag of his cigarette, stubs it out in the ashtray. He's done for the night. "Made plenty of friends in war work."

And _that's_ a spin on the truth if there ever was one, but he's not inclined to go into detail about the cards up his sleeve and none of them have to know the truth. Hurts a bit to say it, though, because so much as he'd thought that would be how it turned out, that he'd meet people and find a ladder to climb, it isn't. Not everyone can be perfect bloody Bates, cosying up to Earls and getting jobs they can't even properly do for it.

No. Thomas has only got himself to rely on — tough luck, not what he wanted, but it's got him this far, hasn't it? If things pan out, he won't have to rely on anyone ever again when things are through. He'll do this all on his own, because he has to.

Anyone who saw enough in him that they'd care to help him get a foot in the door somewhere is dead.


	3. January to December, 1917

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warnings/notes:** death, injury, suicide.

December 31, 1917

Lance Sergeant T Barrow, RAMC

Dear Sergeant Barrow,

I'd wager you thought I was joking when I said I'd write you from the Front. I wasn't joking, and I'm a man of my word, so here's a letter for you. I'd say the first of many, but unfortunately I've been blown up again and the outlook is worse on this one. Not even two weeks since I left Downton! It seems I may not make it to convalescence this time either. Well I've cut my losses and I'm ready to say goodbye if so. This is the last of more than a dozen letters I've had the chaplain write for me today. Poor Padre. 

I hope I'll write you again but we both know I won't, so here's to knowing you. 

Give Lady Edith a kiss for me. Just kidding. I wrote to her already and Nurse Crawley and Nurse Kennedy too. I'm sure you'll all miss me very much. Just kidding. I know I was a terror. You put up with me the best of anyone though, didn't you? 

Thank you. That's why I'm writing. I feel I should give thanks for all you've done. I don't know if you hear that very often, but I hope you do. You're not at all the cold fish you want folks to think you are.

Auld lang syne, Sergeant. Let 1918 be the year this ends once and for all.

Sincerely yours,

2/Lt David Wright

* * *

November 9, 1917

Sergeant Thomas Barrow, RAMC,

I write to announce the passing of my brother, Lieutenant Eugene Goulding II, which occurred in the early morning on the fourth of November in Stationary Field Hospital No. 6, Frévent. He died from wounds received in action.

We the family humbly invite those who knew him to join us in honouring Eugene's memory and sacrifice in the name of his King and Country at a memorial service to be held at Saint Margaret's Church in Bury, Suffolk on the fifteenth of November at eleven o' clock. 

Yours faithfully,

Miss Caroline Goulding

P.s. of all the fellows in Eugene's address book you are the most northerly! Please do not feel obliged to attend as I know it must be burdensome when the news is so sudden and you are in home service. Dear Eugene would never desire that a friend be encumbered in his name. I promise sincerely that I shall light a candle for you if you cannot be present yourself. Thank you from my heart for your service to the Crown and may God bless you!

* * *

3 November 1917

My dear friend Thomas,

The chaplain offered to write this for me but as you might have guessed I did not allow it. I'm not a true Christian anyway and besides, I am of no mind that another should know my thoughts as they concern you. Knowing you as I do, no doubt you will agree with me. I've even arranged for this to be sent by French post as a fellow here knows a man who can manage it. I must be careful regardless, you understand, but it is a relief to know this may be for your eyes only.

Perhaps you won't recognise my penmanship? It dawns on me now you have no reason to either way. You have been away for more than a year and it is only now that I write to you. I wish I hadn't waited as I had to ask far too many questions to learn your mailing address when I might have known it already. Beyond that I should have loved to write you but I suppose I was very afraid. Shame on me! 

But life in the trenches does not allow much time for penning letters, I don't need to tell you that. Still I hope in the time that has passed you've not forgotten your friend Eugene? I was well pleased to learn you were on the home front. For weeks I thought you must have been shot for cowardice or something with how very hush hush they made your departure, and though I'd since learned you weren't dead until a few days ago I didn't know much else. But now I do. Sergeant Thomas Barrow! You do deserve it. I have not forgotten the day we met and I hope I never do for as long as I live though we'll get to that in a moment. Well, I've just written that and to be quite honest I shouldn't mind forgetting, you were the only shining thing about it. I remember there I was thinking I'd be blown to bits if I didn't get out of the way soon but of course I couldn't do it myself, and then before I knew it I was upon your back. I really did think I was on my way to dying and I must have said such foolish things to you for it those days that followed but frankly I do not regret it at all. I meant every word. Do you remember the things I said? I hope that you do. You were the most wonderful companion an officer could have had, they ought to have given you to a Captain or a Major or someone back at the CCS but I had you nearly all to myself whilst you were there. Little old me. What serendipity! For you the memory is doubtless not so pleasant, being surrounded by the dead and dying and injured and going back and forth every fortnight between the front lines and the dressing stations and the field hospitals. To that Thomas I say, unlike me you were not full up of morphine! Perhaps you should have been for I daresay it would have made the job easier. Pleasant or not (not!) however, I hope that whatever you do rue about that brief time we spent together during the Somme campaign it's naught to do with me myself.

For that matter I hope you don't mind my writing. I suppose this might be an unwelcome reminder of the trenches. They've not changed at all since you left them, by the by. It's all ever so dreary. I'm writing you anyhow so you can like it or lump it. Do please like it.

As I mentioned the chaplain and my penmanship, which if you knew it before you wouldn't now because I've not used print since I was in preparatory, and as we both know I've not given you any word at all since they sent you back, and as you must be aware there's still a whole load of rubbish going on in France at the moment (I hope my wording makes you laugh, I do recall how silly you thought me for my clean language even in such a horrid place but I really cannot bear to put anything vulgar into writing especially when my lettering is so childish as this), well, I suppose you must be thinking I'm dying or some such thing, receiving this letter.

Terribly sorry to say it but you'd be right in that. 

They think it will be by morning. It's to do with my heart and it's come on rather sudden, I was meant to be on the train home tomorrow, can you believe it? Well, I told them today that if I was going to die, I should prefer to do it firmly on allied soil rather than in transport… and to my surprise they've respected my wishes! Of course, what that means is I certainly am dying and there's nothing left to be done about it. Thus, I am pretending that this is the same France as the one I visited with Mama and Papa as a boy and that I am in hospital with sunsick in Èze after a day spent traipsing about at the seaside. Don't make fun of me for it please, I know you indulged other men in such fantasies in their final moments and if I may say so I believe you liked me more than them. 

Golly it is odd to speak so plainly of such things! "My final moments." Let it be said that I did indeed dictate to the chaplain for all the rest of my correspondence, but it seemed wrong to have a clergyman write to you in particular. Besides, I find it more and more difficult to speak properly as the day goes on. This is easier than dictating no matter what the state of my hands.

Not only that, it seemed wrong for words such as these to come from another man's pen. Thomas, I am writing you both to tell you that I am dying shortly and to thank you for everything you did for me last year. Perhaps it would have been better if I died then, it would have saved me from all these troubles of late, but if I had I should never have known you as I came to. You and your wit and your cunning and your stories of domestic service (I have made some last demands of Mama and Papa regarding our help in your honour) and your encouragement and your strength that I so dearly needed. I have fought ever so hard for myself at your insistence dear dear friend, but it is time for me to concede this match. 

I do mean to thank you for EVERYTHING, and as I wrote above I meant EVERY WORD that I said to you. Thomas you are dreadfully sharp you will know what I mean by this, won't you? 

Even half so fondly as I remember you I hope you will remember your

Eugene

P.s. I hear the war will be over by Christmas. What a funny joke! If it is do look up for me and we can laugh together at what pessimists we are. If it isn't do that anyway and we shall feel vindicated instead. I know how you like to be right. Best love. xxx

* * *

20 October 1917

Sergeant Thomas Barrow, RAMC

Dear Thomas,

I do apologise for the informality of this letter, but I find I cannot bear to write one of those distant announcements when it is my own beloved boy lost. We received word about a week ago that William was killed in action. We held a private service just this morning. It was very beautiful and I hope he would have liked it. I am sorry not to have invited you but I understand you've been unable to get away from Downton all year and Andrew did think it best to keep things in the family, although you and William were so like brothers it did pain me to do so.

Now, I don't suppose we'll be seeing you in the village anytime soon and your sister seemed reluctant to pass anything on. Thus I thought you might like to have the enclosed. Andrew took one look and said "those should go to the Barrow boy." It's only scorecards and the like. He knows more than I do about all to do with sport but I remember how competitive you boys used to be and those numbers do look impressive. Now, William would surely mind my saying so but I think you were the best athlete in the village. 

Anyhow, to me it seems like very little for you to have when you boys were such good friends. I am very sorry to give them in a letter and not in person. I understand you are quite busy in home service but Thomas, when you are next in Ashton upon Mersey whenever that may be please do look in. You are now and always have been welcome in our home. Mr and Mrs Buchanan asked me to say the same is true for them. Perhaps I shouldn't write it in a letter like this but it seems to me Eula would like very much to see you round again after all that has happened. She is such a sweet young woman, isn't she? William would mind my saying that as well, but between you and me, Thomas, boys will be boys and he always liked her more than he let on!

And here we are. It isn't 1905 anymore, and you have all grown into such fine men and women. I hope you are keeping well, Thomas. Do please write whenever you wish to and know that our door is always open.

Sincerely yours,

Mrs Andrew Peary

* * *

UNDELIVERED FOR REASONS STATED RETURN TO SENDER

Killed 4/9/17

Pte Basil Murphy 

B Comp 2/5 Bn 182 Brig 61st Div

Royal Warwickshire Regiment

B.E.F.

France

* * *

28/8/17

Dear Thomas,

I hope you received my postcard sent from the Field Hospital in Belgium. I'm right pleased I waited to write you proper seeing as I've now been evacuated. I don't think they bother to censor the letters from Engand to England. Well, our unit was gassed and now I'm in hospital in Devon with "pulmonary edema" and the chaplain here suggested I write some letters and do it quick, seeing as I don't have any real affairs to put in order. He didn't use those words, but that is what he meant. They really think the enlisted chaps have nothing going for them, don't they? In my case they're right, but surely they aren't always.

No beating around the bush. I'm dying. They don't know when exactly but apparently I'm past help. I haven't got more than five pals to write to and no family to speak of, but I made a list of fellows to say farewell to and you're right at the top. Perhaps that's crass of me given we met because you saved my life, and it was all for nothing in the end. 

I shouldn't say that. You really did touch my life last year, Thomas, and not just because I was bleeding out when we met and you somehow managed to tie my leg off and let me keep it too. Every time I see a bloke with a Red Cross armband on I think of you and it cheers me up. Mind you I'm in hospital so I see plenty. They must think I'm mad for it. But you and Pte Darby didn't carry me all the way to the dressing station under a bombardment by yourselves for me to think badly of the RAMC boys, did you? It's funny how much of that I remember. You kept me company for hours and talked for all of it. I shouldn't remember any of it but I do. That's your fault, making the worst day of my life worth remembering. Thank you.

Since I'm writing this anyway, you have my condolences about Darby. You two were such good friends, even I could see that. I suppose you had to be to do that job as well as you did but I think there was something special between you two. I was so delirious you and he may as well have been the same person for a while there but you both had so much in common it was natural. I put him second on my list and the chaplain sure hated telling me he was gone.. 

It was very good of you to write me while I was in convalescence. I know we haven't kept in touch since then but it meant so much to me to have a true friend when I'd gone my whole life without one. It really did. I only wish I hadn't stopped once we'd "traded places" me at the Western Front and you at Home.

Now that I'm going to die I hope not to see you again for a long, long time, if you believe in that. I don't know that I do believe but I do know that you ought to have a long and happy life when all this is over. Let's hope that's soon.

That's all.

Yours,

Teddy

* * *

NOTHING is to be written on this side except

the date and signature of the sender. Sentences

not required may be erased. If anything else is 

added the postcard will be destroyed.

~~I am quite well.~~

I have been admitted into hospital

{ sick } ~~and am going on well,~~

{ wounded } ~~and hope to be discharged soon.~~

~~I am being sent down to the base.~~

~~I have received your { letter dated~~

~~{ telegram ,,~~

~~{ parcel ,,~~

Letter follows at first opportunity.

~~I have received no letter from you~~

~~{ lately~~

~~{ for a long time~~

**Signature only }** Pte Theodore Carver 

_Date_ 20/8/17 

* * *

Pte Quinton Adams 

A Batt 6th Bn 42nd Brig 14th Div

Manchester Regiment

B.E.F.

France

K.A. Jul 5 17 Return to sender 

* * *

19 June 1917

Dear Nurse Crawley,

With great sadness I write to inform you of the death of my brother Lt John Fairfax who was this week killed in action.

I hope my writing is not untoward but I thought you might like to know that John upon returning to the Front spoke very highly of his carers at Downton being especially yourself, Nurse Walden, and Cpl Barrow. I would like to thank you on his behalf for your encouragement and attention when he needed it most. 

I've included the letter which he wrote to me his first week in hospital some months ago. I must apologise for the language, but his gratitude and his sentiment are quite plain. 

I hope that my own are also.

Sincerely yours,

2/Lt Thomas Fairfax

20th Battalion, 35th Division, Lancashire Fusiliers

* * *

May 12, 1917

Dear Corporal Thomas Barrow,

It is with deep sorrow that I write to announce the death of my husband Private Henry Townsend. 

Henry died in the afternoon of May 9 at the 2nd Western General Hospital in Manchester. He is survived by his wife Mrs Henry Townsend née Matilda Parker and three children Caroline (5 years), Adelaide (3 years), and George (11 months), sister-in-law Mrs George Townsend II née Josie Smith and his mother and father Mr and Mrs George Townsend. He is predeceased by brother Lance Corporal George Townsend II, 1879-1916, and son Christopher, 1910.

There will be a mass in Henry's memory at St Martin's Church in Ashton upon Mersey on May 24 at ten o' clock. 

Yours faithfully,

Mrs Henry Townsend 

PS Eula Buchanan was kind enough to provide me with your mailing address. I was so pleased to learn you and she keep correspondence and that you are well at home in England. 

* * *

25 April 1917

To Corporal Thomas Barrow, RAMC:

I write to inform you of the death of Private Zachary Smith, 8th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. Pte Smith was killed in action yesterday the 24th of April 1917 at ██████ 

Enclosed is your letter delivered on that date. Any future correspondence addressed to Pte Smith will be returned by the War Office.

You have my deepest condolences.

Your most obedient servant,

Captain Rob Yearsley, 8th Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry

* * *

18 March 1917

Dear Thomas,

Thank you very much for your brief and cordial letter. I do understand you must be very busy at the hospital in Downton and I am grateful you took the time to send your condolences despite it. The service was lovely in just the way Mother liked and Cliff would have positively hated it but these things are not for the fallen so much as the family, are they?

Now I am going to be very blunt. Do forgive me if I misread your tone as I do not wish to say things which are unwarranted but Thomas I meant exactly as I wrote and I do know far more than you think I do, so don't you dare not write only for the fear of my misunderstanding your intentions. I've learned very well what will and won't be, goodness knows I've had to since this dreadful dreadful war began. In my heart I am to be Mrs Matthew Gillis forevermore besides. Given that there is a war on I doubt very much that anyone shall pay much mind to an unmarried man and woman keeping a correspondence as I should like to with you, but if they do, well! as you know I never cared a whit for what is and isn't proper. If I did I should not have written such a terribly mortifying letter to you in the first place when I haven't seen you since we were fifteen. In any case, please keep well whether you write or not. Let us let bygones be bygones for I truly do believe you may be the only one left who could possibly understand what I am feeling.

Yours very sincerely,

Eula

* * *

5 March 1917

Dear Thomas,

Mum told not to be so personal in the announcements but I couldn't bear to say nothing, so here's another letter for you, and in a different envelope so as to be perfectly proper just to please her. I hope this doesn't come as a shock hearing from me although naturally the news probably is. I know you've not heard from us in what must be ten years now. I am ashamed to say I had to ask your sister for your mailing address! And to think we used to live right next door! Please be assured we should be thankful to have you attend next Saturday if you can. All of us would, not only me. I don't suppose you've had many letters like this if you were at the Front all last year but it seems so many of the boys from our school won't ever be home again, there is simply more and more bad news every day and my heart aches for it. I promised my hand to Matthew Gillis, and though it's been more than a year already he's gone I still don't know that I'll ever want to marry again. I feel as though I'll be in black for years and years. If I'm quite honest I don't yet believe that Cliff won't come back someday. I know he won't, but I don't believe it, you see? It does make writing all these letters easier, like we're playing pretend. I thought I might burst into tears of joy when I learned you were alive and in England which I'm sure you must think so silly of me as we were never very close when we were children, so much as I wished to be! I did fancy you terribly and Cliff thought me such a bother for it, hanging around you two boys! Well, war changes everything doesn't it? And now you a Corporal in the Medical Corps! How very noble! No matter how wretched things are it comforts me to know that some wish to do nothing else but ease pain and suffering. Dear Cliff, he was never that way as I'm sure you recall, you and he did have that horrid row. But do you know, Thomas, it isn't a surprise at all how you turned out, although I suppose not everyone would agree with me. But not everyone sat beside you in assembly every year of primary school now did they? Why, every autumn when we were placed I was so thankful that Phyllis Baxter was too old and Vaughn Bethell too young to go between us. What silly things I used to concern myself with! Vaughn's in the RAMC now, too, he drives a motor ambulance, if you can believe that! He was such an awful boy yet I say a prayer for him every night now that he's away on the Front. When I was a girl I'd never have thought I could do such a thing but war makes those petty quarrels of childhood seem like Heaven on Earth, doesn't it? Poor Tillie is beyond herself with him away and her husband, too, she and Henry T married in 1909 I think it was? Rather young! And of course we all thought she'd go with Vaughn but my! the wedding was the most beautiful thing and the children are so lovely I think they must just be true soul mates! They've got two girls and a baby boy; it frightens me terribly that beloved fathers are in such danger. That's right, Henry T is in the Army now of course, as is Henry N. They're in the same battalion as Cliff is too, they all joined up together when this started. Matthew as well. If you think of a boy from school I guarantee he's likely on the Front or he was. Oscar Whitman didn't go on account of his eyes, he and Dorothy Smith married a couple of years back and now they're in the family way and Dot is ever so grateful she knows the little one will have a father, isn't that just awful? Only three years ago we girls took it for granted that our children would have fathers and we husbands. So much has happened since. I mentioned Phyllis, last I heard she went into domestic service like you did. I suppose your sister would know more about her than I do. She was always so shy, wasn't she? But always kind to us in the lower years, goodness that wasn't true of everyone, was it. Who else? Emma Greene and Timothy Lewis married in '13 and they have a sweet little boy born just as the war started. Tim enlisted in the Navy first thing. You remember how Emma was surely. She's not changed a jot, and she keeps us well informed on him every Sunday at church. He's a Petty Officer I think it is. William Peary went into service too a year after you. Me personally I've had no word from him since but from what I hear he was a valet and now he's in the infantry. I've not seen an armband on Mrs Peary so I imagine he's doing well as can be. Maybe you don't like to hear about him, you two never did get along again after what happened did you? Well I only want to tell you of the nice things so never mind that. How peculiar to think of everyone at once when it must have been fifteen years we were all in the same place! It all becomes one memory after a time, doesn't it. We walked the same road to school together every day year after year without cares and now we're all grown and far apart and there's a war on. Anyhow I hope we shall see you at the service but if we do not I do beg you write occasionally? There really is so much to say you've been away for so long! How foolish I feel putting all of this to paper when we've not spoken since leaving school! Why I could write you a whole book. I find with each of these announcements I recall more and more of my youth and I suppose I miss it terribly now that it has well and truly ended. I do hope not to impose by writing so out of the blue, but there are things I feel you ought to know about our little neighborhood here in Ashton that perhaps no one has told you and it seems so crude to keep from you a loss such as this when you were so a part of things when we were young. Then, I suppose you went away for a reason. But it is as I said, Thomas, war changes everything, and I cannot think of anyone in the village who wouldn't be delighted to see you back here a grown man alive and well. I truly cannot. Yet even so I feel I might understand more than you know your reasons not to come home. Do write? 

Blessings and love to you.

Affectionately yours,

Eula

* * *

5 March 1917

Dear Corporal Thomas Barrow,

It saddens me to announce the loss of my beloved brother Private Clifford Buchanan, who has been deemed missing in action, presumed dead by the War Office. 

A memorial service will take place at St Martin's Church in Ashton on Mersey on the 10th of March beginning at half three.

Sincerely yours,

Miss Eula Buchanan

* * *

February 5th 1917

Corporal Thomas Barrow, RAMC,

This letter is to announce the loss of our son Lieutenant Marion James Wheelock who died whilst serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps on the twentieth of January, 1917, age 27 years.

A private memorial service was held on the first of February at St Matthew Church in Leyburn, North Riding.

Please see enclosed.

Sincerely yours,

Dr and Mrs James Wheelock

* * *

NOTHING is to be written on this side except

the date and signature of the sender. Sentences

not required may be erased. If anything else is 

added the postcard will be destroyed.

I am quite well.

~~I have been admitted into hospital~~

~~{ sick } and am going on well,~~

~~wounded } and hope to be discharged soon.~~

~~I am being sent down to the base.~~

I have received your { letter dated 13-1-17

{ ~~telegram ,,~~

{ ~~parcel ,,~~

~~Letter follows at first opportunity.~~

~~I have received no letter from you~~

~~{ lately~~

~~{ for a long time~~

**Signature only }** Marion J Wheelock 

_Date_ 17-1-17 

* * *

6-1-17

Corporal Barrow, RAMC,

I ought to have known better and used an Honour envelope after what happened, but I was positively mad over it all and I never thought to. The major and the padre both gave me quite the scolding, and I imagine they'll have eyes on me now for weeks to come. Just my luck. Although I suppose I am lucky not to have been court-martialled. Frankly, I've not the faintest idea as to whether you even received my last letter, and if you did, how much of it was left after they went through it. I was distraught when I wrote it, and I'm sure I penned things I didn't truly mean.

Another Christmas come and gone and here we are still at war, and here I am commanding men I've no business holding charge of and all because my father just so happened to know the right folks at the Recruitment Office!

Damn it all, I'm beginning to sound like you, aren't I? I shan't mind it, for you were right, of course. About the whole bloody business. 

Well, I've got leave coming up in a month so I'll have to keep on until then I reckon. You were always such a good sport about that, finding things for the rest of us to look forward to, even if you never seemed to take your own advice to heart. There's a proverb about that somewhere I imagine, but the Bible was Darby's forte, not mine. For all his talk of atheism he still knew every damn word of the thing, not that it was ever very helpful. If only laying on the hands worked for shrapnel wounds.

Speaking of Darby, now he's gone I'm the only man left of our team as it was when we started for the Somme, and you and I are the only two kicking left on Earth. I miss you something terrible, Barrow. War really changes everything. You and I never would have met in England before all this, and sorry as I am to say it if we had I'm sure I'd never have given you a second thought, our stations being what they were, but now it's hell down here without you in my company. Who would ever have guessed I'd be missing some other house's footman? Not to be uncouth about it. But I don't suppose you'll go back to service when this blasted war is over, will you? When all is said and done I'll have to get you in Leyburn for drinks and you can beat me at 21 like the old days at the Front.

Something else to look forward to. I ought to write them all down. More and more these days I feel there's nothing left for me anywhere, not now nor for the end of all this if it ever comes. I'm afraid to return home. My mates are all down here and who knows what's happened with them, and no one who hasn't been in the trenches will understand what it's been like these last two years. I can't imagine what it will be like to go back when the war's done. All those expectations, taking over the practice and marrying a nice girl and whatnot. I suppose it must be worse for you. It feels like some horrible joke that anyone could go back to meaningless balls and dinners and garden parties after years of fighting, but if I know anything about the upper upper classes they've never actually stopped it, have they? For the rest of us it won't ever be as it was before, mark my words.

That is, if the war ever does end. It hasn't made any promises.

Yours,

Lieutenant Marion J Wheelock, RAMC

* * *

1-1-1917. Cpl Barrow. I'm sorry to send you this during Christmas, but seeing as it happened at Christmas I don't have much of a choice, do I? Perhaps I'll be lucky and you won't receive this until after Epiphany, but luck is in short supply in a war just as everything else. This is not an easy letter to write and I'm near out of paper and pencil both but you of all men deserve to know the truth of what happened. The short of it is that after Darby was wounded at █████████████ █████ ███████████ █ ███████ No other way to put it. I know he was dear to you, and you to him. I don't know how I should feel about it, and what I do feel ought not be put to paper. I imagine you might understand what I mean by that. ██████████ █████████████ ████████ ███████ ██████████ Hope you're keeping well up in dear old Blighty, Thomas. I really do. You were the best of the enlisted fellows in████████ ███████████ █████████ ██orry for calling you Thomas, but I couldn't resist taking one last chance to rile you up. I say that as if I'll never write you again, don't I? ██ ████ ███████████ ███████████ ███████ ███████ ███ Blimey this note's rather a mess but you can't blame me for being out of sorts after the day I've had. You wouldn't. I know that about you. As much as I miss having your sharp tongue around, seeing as none of these new boys dare to talk back to me and they're all bores besides, I thank God every night you made it out alive, because we don't all, do we? Today I was reminded of that. More and more I wish I had courage like yours. Darby had a spot too much ████████ ████████ █████ ██████████ ██ Now you're home don't forget about your very favourite junior officer and your pals down in ███████ Happy New Year. Lt Wheelock, RAMC


	4. August, 1927

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follows [took no time with the fall](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21538864).

Thomas makes it about a week before calling him again, and he dials the number in a markedly different state from the first time.

"Ellis, Royal Household."

"Barrow," he says, "Downton Abbey."

"Thomas."

"Yeah, is it — it's not too late?"

It's been August for forty minutes.

"Only in the sense that I'd hoped to hear from you sooner."

He should be thrilled to hear those words. And Ellis probably smiling on the other end of the line, he sounds like he is, and that ought to be thrilling, too, the idea that he's making a man smile.

But he doesn't feel thrilled.

He feels ill.

"Thomas?"

There is a weight in his chest and an emptiness in his head.

"I," he starts. "I don't know why I called, if I'm honest."

"Do you need a reason?"

"No," he starts to say. "But…"

He doesn't realise he's been clenching his left hand into a fist until a muscle in his wrist twitches — he pulls the key fob out of the pocket of his dressing gown, holds the flat side with his thumb and presses the engraved side to his third and second fingers.

This was a bad idea.

"This was a bad idea."

"...is something wrong?"

"Shouldn't have called, that's all," he says. His voice doesn't sound like _his_. "Don't… don't worry about me."

_Stupid, you called him, not the other way around._

"Can't not, I'm afraid, I've made you my business."

He's trying to cheer him up, thinks Thomas, or at least keep the mood light, and he doesn't know if he likes that he is or not but it's… God, it's something that he cares, he can see that, even if he's dull to it at the moment.

Thomas swallows. When was the last time he tried to talk to anyone, when he was like this? Months ago? More than a year, probably — but only to Phyllis, and on one or two occasions Andy, but he's got on fine without anyone to hear him out for ages. Smoking does the trick, normally, even if he's been trying to let that go, but it's not the same as having a real human being around who cares to hear what he has to say and won't just up and leave if what that is is too much.

(Would Ellis leave, he wonders, and he hopes not, because the man had spent half of the drive back to Downton just talking to him, smooth and easy, until Thomas found words again himself. And that was something he didn't have to do.)

He's forgotten how to _be heard._

He doesn't know how to go about turning his thoughts into anything remotely coherent. Despite knowing exactly why come and expecting that Ellis would understand, he can't bring himself to say anything that matters.

"Why?"

The pause is brief.

"That's what you do, isn't it? When you have someone?"

He has someone. Someone has him.

They're for each other.

"Is it," he says, mouth dry.

"Well, Mr Barrow, it's what I do." He pauses. "What I want to do."

The words fall out of his mouth, clunky and graceless:

"Had a bad dream."

And before Ellis can reply, he adds, "it's silly, really, childish – "

"Just about every man of our generation has bad dreams, Thomas," says Ellis, extraordinarily gentle.

"It wasn't about that."

Except for how it was.

He never did have nightmares before the war, not since he was a child and they were all about tangible things, the sort you'd find in a penny dreadful and scoff at in daylight but fix on at night. Nowadays they're _feelings_.

And tonight he feels dead.

Ellis is silent again.

Thomas says, "how much can I tell you like this?"

"Depends on the operator."

He takes a deep breath. "Downton's a party line."

"Does the Countess tend to make telephone calls at one in the morning?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Private on my end."

"Really."

"Can't have servants knowing other servants' business, now, can we?"

Thomas doesn't think he'd find it funny if he weren't so nervous, but he is nervous, and he laughs. He's… beginning to calm down, actually, with the talking in circles. He wonders if Ellis is doing it on purpose.

"They divide and conquer, at Buckingham Palace," Ellis says, a tad more seriously. "Has its benefits, when one's not made himself many alliances."

"Have you not?"

It's surprising to him — the man is so genial and diplomatic.

"Oh, I have."

A beat.

"Barring a single exception, none that would last."

He knows _if what._

And he has to wonder about the exception, too, but he's not got it in him to ask.

"What's it like, working there?"

"Busy."

"Might've guessed that."

"They change clothes about a hundred times a day, if that tells you anything."

Might've guessed that, too, but there's something about the way he says it, that casual, teasing lilt of his, that makes Thomas think he's got something more to share. 

"Can't complain about that when it keeps you in a job, can you?"

"I do try not to look a given horse in the mouth," Ellis says, like he means to go on, but then there's nothing.

Thomas finds himself smiling, and then he finds himself hoping Ellis is, too. He sounds like he might be.

"But?" he asks.

"But you'd not believe what — then, I suppose it's nothing next to what goes on at Downton Abbey."

He's definitely smiling.

"Go on, Mr Ellis."

"I tell you, Mr Barrow, today was a…"

By the time they hang up at half one, he's all but forgotten why he called in the first place.


	5. 1924

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warnings/notes:** homophobia, shame/mortification.
> 
> this is not a pleasant chapter.

"And in the war?"

_How is that bloody relevant._

"I was in the Medical Corps, sir. Lance sergeant."

"Quite impressive, Mr Barrow."

Thomas tries to smile — he presses his lips together and tilts up his chin, keeps his eyes open. It doesn't seem to have much of an effect. 

He fidgets, shifting his weight from side to side in his chair and curling his hand into and out of a fist. He'll need to smoke as soon as this is over with; he's counting on that he'll be able to.

After it's been quiet for what feels like too long, he goes ahead and says, "er, thank you, sir," because he's not sure what else he _ought_ to say.

Doctor Monroe adjusts his glasses and writes something down on one of the many slips of paper in front of him, then on the clipboard.

He flips the sheet over; Thomas doesn't look at it.

"I, too, served with the medical corps — dreadful business, wasn't it?"

Uncomfortable, Thomas nods. His mouth is dry; he says nothing.

"And where did you serve?"

"On the Front, sir, until 1916, and then — "

"Where on the Front?"

Thomas blinks.

"Er, in France, but they moved us all over, really…"

"Perhaps I was unclear — in what capacity, Mr Barrow?"

Completely different question. He tries to hide his annoyance.

"I was a stretcher bearer, sir."

This does not seem to endear him to the doctor.

"I see."

Thomas stares at his lap.

"A multifaceted role, Mr Barrow, isn't it? To hold it a man must be quick on his feet, and hale, of course, but beyond that the requirements are rather different from those of the infantry. Do you agree?"

It feels like a trick question.

"I suppose that I do, sir."

They are, bureaucratically, after all.

"Why did you not choose to enlist in the infantry?"

Been honest already, no use stopping now.

"I… hoped not to see combat, sir."

"I see."

More notes.

"But you did, of course."

"Yes."

"Right in the thick of things."

"Er, yes, I suppose."

"Were you very good at the work, Mr Barrow?"

Thomas shrugs.

"You may be forthright."

"I… believe I was, sir."

The scribble of the pen is getting to be grating.

"I should be surprised to hear you say otherwise."

"Er…"

"I agree with you, of course. I believe you must have exceeded expectations."

He doesn't make it sound like a good thing.

"Perhaps too much so."

 _There it is,_ Thomas thinks. 

He's been saying things like that all afternoon, nonsensical backhanded compliments and the like, and he probably ought to care more about it, but… he's here to begin with, after all. He's not got all that much dignity left, really. And even if he did, he's too bloody tired to think too much on any of this, the first session this morning left him muddled and exhausted.

"You know as well as I, Mr Barrow, that the efforts of transporters were often futile. Not every life could be saved, could it?"

Thomas opens his mouth to speak, but the doctor doesn't let him: "thus it was a requirement that one be devoted to his charge, that in addition to making use of his medical training he provide… companionship."

Right. Okay. This is just an extended lead in to ask about his relationship history, then, same as everything else. He ought to have expected it, really, seeing as that's been the topic of discussion for the last bloody hour and a half.

Can't they just get back to the actual fixing him part?

"No man wishes to die alone, Mr Barrow."

Plenty of the men he kept company might've had a better time of it if they had, though, before he got to them — quick and dirty, rather than suffering for hours getting carted off to a dressing station without room for them, waiting for attention from someone more qualified.

…God, he hasn't thought about this in ages, and he's not exactly happy to be doing so now.

Doctor Monroe raises his eyebrows and writes some more.

"I shouldn't think so, sir," says Thomas. He looks away, down and out the open window.

The street below bustles with normalcy: there's the pitter patter of rain, the whir of motor engines, the hum of many conversations all at once, men and women walking arm in arm. He wishes he were down there, just a pedestrian in a sea of pedestrians, each unremarkable and only part of a whole. Anonymous.

How many of them are wrong like he is?

None, from this vantage point.

"You mustn't become distracted, Mr Barrow."

He snaps his head back.

"Sorry."

The word sounds very small.

Probably because he feels that way.

"For this you need not apologise — it's quite natural to be uneasy when confronted with one's errs. May I go on?"

_With one's errs._

Thomas nods again.

He's not got it left in him to do otherwise at this point.

"For most men, Mr Barrow, the bonds which form between men at war come from only the most noble of intentions. In the role which you held, an ordinary man would seek to alleviate pain and offer comfort without regard to himself — if he were to develop an attachment, it should be of fellow feeling and comradeship, nothing more. You know what I mean by _more,_ of course."

Not for the first time in the day, Thomas feels like he could vomit.

Thankfully, he doesn't.

"I have met very fine, selfless men who took to their duties well and in a manner pure at heart."

_Where is he going with this._

"Men who should never be prone to make an object of the infirm."

The implication puts a lump in his throat; he stares at his lap and tries not to fidget with his glove or his jacket.

Doesn't need any more chastising about his bloody tics.

"I need not tell you that none of them shared your affliction."

His face burns.

"But there is hope for the future, is there not? Now, Mr Barrow, I should like to discuss the _attachments_ you formed during your military service…"


	6. June, 1917

"May I write to you, sir," Thomas said, unable to really make it sound like a question. "At… at Farley Hall – "

"Would you?" said Lieutenant Courtenay quickly, a sudden note of desperation in his voice. "You and Nurse Crawley both?"

 _Always Nurse Crawley_ , he thought, almost bitter — but then, she was the only person he couldn't feel all the way bitter about, these days. Never had he ever known anyone so much a ray of sunshine as Lady Sybil.

"Yeah," he said, "yeah, I – er, I can't, can't speak for her, but she would, I think."

He took a deep breath, tried to calm himself, then went on, "and I'd very much like to, myself."

For the first time since that morning, Lieutenant Courtenay smiled.

Because of him.

(Earlier, Lady Sybil had been the one responsible.)

(They were in stiff competition, the two of them, although she probably didn't know it — then, the nice thing was, in the end they both got to win, seeing as the objective was cheering him up, getting some of that weight off his shoulders and enjoying the look on his face when it happened. For Thomas, at least..)

"I should like that, Corporal."

Thomas's heart sped; his mouth went dry.

He took a chance, and swiped his thumb along the back of Courtenay's hand in gentle circles, caressing his knuckles — incredible that this was something they did, that more often than not when Thomas was at his bedside Courtenay took hold of his hand and they just held one another that way, and it made Thomas's head spin exactly the same way every single time.

But he hadn't done _this_ before.

He stopped short the moment Courtenay's brow furrowed and his lips twisted, a pit in his stomach.

The smile was only a glimmer, and he'd gone and been selfish and ruined it — 

"Only it won't be the same," Courtenay said, the beginning of vitriol in his voice… but to Thomas's wonder, he returned the gesture, drawing his thumb up and over his fingers.

Affectionate.

"Sir?"

Thomas spoke without a voice, just breath, as though if he were to move or make a sound it'd be over again. All in his head.

"Not having either of you to read them to me."

Oh, God; oh, God; oh, _God._

"Someone will, though," said Thomas firmly, ignoring the quickening of his heartbeat and the rush in his head, because this was _serious,_ he'd been keeping track of the things Courtenay said, noting the ups and downs, and this was _not good,_ but part of him, a stupid selfish disgusting part, was jumping for joy at the sentiment. "Someone you like well enough."

"It won't be the _same,_ " he replied, pleading, now, "I like _you_."

He hadn't known until this moment how much someone could really be happy and horrified at the same time.

"And I like you, too, sir, and so does La – Nurse Crawley, and we'll keep in touch."

He squeezed his hand.

"I promise you that, Lieutenant."

He'd write him every damn day, learn bloody braille, if he had to; he really would… 

From Lieutenant Courtenay there's nothing, not even a squeeze back.

Thomas looked him over, searching — he didn't have to be worried about _him_ seeing anything untoward in it, but there were the nurses and the other soldiers (ought to be more concerned with the former, probably), and they saw more than they liked to let on… but he wasn't going to be shy about it now, because he was searching for something.

Courtenay had his head tilted to the side and his torso angled almost entirely away, as he'd taken to doing after Lady Sybil told him he didn't have to bother with seeming like he was looking at someone, what mattered was his ears… she was thoughtful like that. The other day he'd gotten upset about it out of nowhere, not knowing how to be polite anymore, as if it had been a problem for him til then — that was part of why Thomas liked him so much, he had a spark in him, even if a tampered one. But all of a sudden he'd been more upset about it than Thomas would ever have been in his shoes, and if he was going to take etiquette advice from anyone, he would take it from the daughter of an Earl.

This particular daughter of an Earl didn't really care a whit for any of it, but she knew that he did, and that was what mattered.

Still, even when it wasn't head-on, he showed a lot on his face, Courtenay did.

But he wasn't much now. That was the thing.

Just when Thomas was about to say something more, Courtenay said, "you must call me by my Christian name," still insistent, but… nicer.

He knew what it was already, he'd seen it on his chart and all that, but he waited to hear him say it, himself. It'd give him a sense of control back, because that's what this was about, wasn't it? That was all they needed to do, was make him realise how much he had going for him, how much he could have and do — he could take care of plenty of things himself, eventually, have a say in his own life. People were _born_ blind, after all, and they managed, didn't they?

And Courtenay would manage.

"Edward," he said. "My name is Edward."

 _Edward_ would manage.

"Edward," Thomas repeated, a strange, fuzzy feeling in his forehead and behind his ears.

Edward, Edward, Edward. 

Now that he had permission he was going to say it every chance he got, in the time they had left.

Within reason.

Couldn't be _too_ obvious.

"What's yours?"

"What?"

Edward laughed, just once, a quick, short sound. "Your name, Corporal."

But he had laughed at all _,_ and now he was smiling again, just a little, just enough that Thomas noticed — it was like bloody whiplash, with this one, but even if he was swinging like a pendulum he was at least hitting the stops that mattered.

This one mattered.

"I'm Thomas."

"Thomas," Edward murmured. 

His heart was skipping beats.

"I cannot tell you how grateful I am, Thomas."

Those words hardly helped the fact that it was.

"Only doing my job, sir," Thomas told him, trying to keep his tone light. "...Edward."

He smiled as he said it, couldn't help himself.

"Are you really?"

…he definitely wasn't, not _only,_ and he couldn't tell if Edward wanted him to be or not.

"Yeah," Thomas said. "Well."

And Edward turned his head.

 _God, he's striking,_ Thomas thought, and then he was embarrassed for it — at least Courtenay couldn't see him blush, but in the past weeks he'd somehow developed a way of knowing exactly when Thomas was most flustered… 

"Well?"

Just like that.

"May not be an officer," said Thomas slowly, "but I have my favourites." He had one favourite, specifically, and it was the man sitting in front of him.

"We do all have favourites," Edward replied, and then he squeezed his fingers, began once more to stroke across the tops of them. 

It was as though Thomas had forgotten how to breathe, how to speak; all he could manage to think was, _am I one of yours?_

"…although I don't know what I've done to deserve being one of yours, Thomas." 

"I've got my reasons."

He did.

None he thought himself capable of articulating.

"But I know I've been so dreadfully pettish with you."

"Not just with me." He got snippy with Lady Sybil and the other nurses, too.

Edward smiled. 

Good, that's what he'd hoped for.

"You most of all."

Wasn't entirely sure what that was supposed to mean, but he'd take it as it was.

"You have a right to your feelings, you know," Thomas told him. "Here and other places. Don't forget that."

He took a deep breath.

"Don't let them _make_ you forget."

"I won't," said Edward, serious again. 

Thomas nodded, then realised, and went for squeezing his hand again.

"Promise?"

"I swear it."

"Good."

Together they paused, and Thomas stared at him, just hoping. For what? He didn't actually know. But he had a right to his _own_ feelings, and he was going to hope like his life counted on him doing so.

"I've been pleased to have a fellow around," Edward began. "The nurses, even Nurse Crawley, they… women don't… well, you're someone who understands, aren't you, Thomas?"

"Sir?"

He frowned, shook his head just slightly, and Thomas amended, "Edward?"

"I… fear I've not shown you how much I've cared for your company."

"You have."

"No," said Edward, "not in the way I'd…"

_Did he mean what Thomas hoped he did?_

Unluckily, unluckily, _God, he wished he could get away with ignoring it,_ one of the nurses called for Thomas to come over.

Immediately, Edward pulled his hand away.

Like he'd touched a hot stove.

"You're not to see me again, Thomas," he went on hastily, "but I hope that you remember me fondly, despite how unmannerly — "

"I'll see you again in the morning," Thomas told him, intently. Sometimes all that worked with him was no-nonsense. "To give you a good sendoff, and then we'll… we'll write."

" _Corporal Barrow,_ I should really appreciate your — "

"Don't wait around for just me," murmured Edward. 

And then, "thank you, Thomas, truly."

"My pleasure, Edward," Thomas whispered. He stood.

And that was going to have to be enough for the night.


	7. December, 1927

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warnings/notes:** death, suicide, ptsd.

"No need to talk about this in much detail, if it's…"

They've been on the telephone for ages already — yet another time Thomas is thankful he's the one in charge of balancing the books, seeing as the bill's jumped up since July. Add to that that the Crawleys are away at Brancaster and he had an earlier night than usual, he's been waiting for Ellis to say goodnight for the past twenty minutes. Then, he had an easier day of things himself, such that they're about two hours ahead of their normal schedule, so it doesn't really matter if he doesn't just yet.

Though, seeing as their normal schedule is in the middle of the night… 

"No," Thomas says eventually. "I'm all right."

Although he sort of regrets bringing it up. Ruined his own French lesson.

Then, given the letters they've been writing, could anyone really blame him for the war being on his mind?

" – er, are you?" he adds hastily, because this isn't just about him.

"Yeah," Ellis says, and Thomas imagines him doing that little sympathetic half-smile thing he does where his lips only move a bit but his eyes crinkle all the same. It's getting harder to imagine things like that, been long enough now, and he _hates_ it, but in less than two weeks it's Christmas and Dick will be in York a few days after, and they'll steal a couple of hours in Easingwold — chosen only because it's along the trainline, and they can meet in the middle. "Yeah, I don't mind it."

"You'll tell me if you start to?"

Because between the two of them, it's him that's more likely to get in a bad way over it.

On the other end of the line there's nothing but fuzzy silence, which is an answer in and of itself.

"Dick…"

"Don't mind it," he repeats, "so long as it's someone else."

Shell shock is funny like that.

"Yeah, well, if it, er…"

Thomas knew how to tiptoe around things, once, but he's sort of forgotten how. He does, however, have someone worth learning it all over again for. 

And he's got enough regret about what he thought of people affected like that back when the actual war was on — hypocritically, he knows that much now — that it's some kind of repentance, working him through his nerves, being around for him. It's only been by letter, really, this is the second phone call they've had since before he wrote on Armistice Day (the first one, on the day he'd finally written him back, didn't go very well) but… it makes sense, that he can get by when it's someone else's story. 

Dick had closed his first letter asking he answer his questions and not mention the rest of it, although more eloquently than that.

As was his fashion.

"I can look after myself, Mr Barrow," says Ellis, unbothered. 

"Doesn't mean I can't look after you as well."

Something he desperately wants to do.

More silence.

"Look," Thomas says, trying not to let the budding frustration seep into his voice, "let's just – talk about something else – "

"No."

Okay.

Thomas huffs, says nothing.

And then Dick goes, "why don't you tell me about him."

If he says so.

"Fine, but I do mean it," Thomas says, as resolved as he can. "If you… if you get all… you've got to say something."

"On my honour."

That's the best he'll get.

Of course, now the issue is that Thomas has never told anyone about this in his life, _anyone,_ and that the time when he got close to doing so it wasn't exactly to someone who intended to comfort him about it.

"Where was he from?"

"Devonshire," Thomas says immediately, because he remembers that clear enough. 

Ellis hums; Thomas doesn't say anything.

"What'd he do there before it all?"

"Farm."

"Huh," Ellis says. "How did – "

"I can just talk, you know, it doesn't need to be a bloody interrogation."

…God, he never does find out how irritated he actually is about something until he can't put words back in his mouth.

Understandably, Ellis doesn't take to it kindly: "let me tell you something, Thomas, I really wish you wouldn't speak to me that way."

There he goes again fucking ruining everything he touches because he can't treat people like —

" — that was condescending, wasn't it."

Takes two to tango.

"Least you were honest."

Even if his tone left something to be desired.

It turns out that having a _beloved_ is not always all that it's cracked up to be, but that's the thing about knowing another person enough to love them, isn't it. You have to get to the point where someone else might run screaming and decide to plant your feet anyway because the rest of it's worth it.

Dick's said plenty more patronising things to him before, that was barely the tip of the iceberg just then, and Thomas has been barbed and cutting and nasty, but they… always realise they're doing it, for one thing, and then they talk about it.

Which is never not awkward and uncomfortable.

But that's what you do when you have someone worth keeping around.

"Sorry," Ellis says, quiet. Scary quiet. "Sorry."

"No, I am."

Nothing. Again.

"I think maybe now's not the time," Thomas says slowly, because he can tell when they're near to boiling over and this came on very, very fast relative to where they've been before. "It's getting late, you ought to sleep."

 _Please just say something,_ Thomas thinks, but he doesn't.

"You're going to be tired enough tomorrow," he adds, "and you don't exactly need a head start."

Because he's off to Windsor Castle first thing in the morning and they won't be able to write or make telephone calls until the day before they're to see one another again.

This is not the note he'd hoped to end on.

"Write to me?" he continues, "about, er, this, and I'll… do the same, and we can wait to send it if we have to, seeing as you'll be away…"

It's worked before.

"But I think you ought to go to bed," he says, and it seems like an okay finish. It gets a response out of him, at least: a breathy chuckle. Thomas holds his breath and waits for more.

When nothing comes, he murmurs, "ever yours," because they're soppy and they end their phone calls like they close their letters and it makes the deep-down romantic in his heart do circus tricks, but he's nervous in saying it just now.

"Don't hang up," Ellis says immediately, and, yeah, Thomas should have changed the subject back when his gut first told him to. "Can't - I can't sleep when I'm like this."

"Okay."

Thomas swallows.

_Okay._

"Tell me about him," Ellis says again.

"Not convinced that's a good idea."

"I need to _know,"_ he returns, frantic, "I need to know that – "

A beat.

"That what?"

Another one.

"That you weren't alone."

Like he was, he means.

Touching in one way, tragic in all the others.

"Dick," says Thomas, intentional, and he tries not to falter, because he doesn't do very well when people get odd like this, that was always a trouble of his — the one thing he really had to _try_ about, back in the day, "this doesn't have a happy ending."

That makes him actually laugh.

"Christ, does fucking anything, where the war's concerned?"

 _You never swear,_ Thomas thinks, and he worries that maybe he's not talking to his own Ellis, Mr-Richard-Ellis-Royal-Valet-To-His-Majesty-Don't-Go-Calling-Me-Richard, but to Private Richard Ellis, in the trenches with the infantry, far away and ten years ago.

It happens like that. He knows from seeing it.

" – my sincerest apologies to the operator, Miss Whoever-You-Are, for my language, if you're listening."

His own.

"Or Mister," Thomas says, smiling despite everything, and Dick's laugh is less hollow this time.

"Unlikely."

"But you never know, do you."

"Right. Miss _or Mister_ Whoever-you-are…"

His very very own.

"Mind your own business?" Thomas suggests.

They've gotten less careful in all this since they started, because Dick has a friend at the GPO switchboard (he knows bloody _everyone)_ and she told him in no uncertain terms what happens to their jobs if an operator gets caught snooping, but they get damn close to too much sometimes.

"Yeah."

Although they always manage to reel it back in, when they do.

They're both thinking about that at the moment, he's sure.

"What were you gonna ask?" Thomas says, gentle as he can be.

Ellis hums. 

"How'd you end up in the same regiment? If you were out of Richmond, and he was from Devonshire."

"We didn't."

It was a fluke, the two of them ever meeting.

Happy chance, one might say.

 _Pity he offed himself,_ Thomas thinks, and then he pinches his wrist for it, takes a deep breath in and out through his nose.

Not like he would have been around for him if he hadn't.

"Medical Corps worked a bit differently, besides, but — he was out of Somerset, actually."

"Somerset," Ellis repeats.

He's just casually conversational, like he wasn't on the verge of a nervous episode two minutes ago.

"Yeah. Er, ours and his, he was adjacent to the Somerset Light Infantry, we were already in the same place and then they put us all together officially after… because of what happened the first day. On the Somme."

"All that rearranging."

"Yeah."

"Like we were puzzle pieces."

"Always thought of it like…"

He stops before he says something foolish, grumbles aloud.

"Like what?"

"It's stupid."

Ellis sighs — endeared, Thomas thinks, not at wits' end.

"Never heard you follow that phrase up with anything that actually is stupid, Mr Barrow."

As in, what, _when you_ are _stupid it comes out of nowhere?_

Thomas laughs. Just a little.

"Fine – do you know anything about mechanics?"

"How so?"

"Like… the inside of a clock."

"Thomas, I don't even know anything about the outside of a clock."

At that Thomas _actually_ laughs, the kind that comes out of his chest when he least expects it and leaves him breathless — he hadn't laughed like that in years til this past summer, and then Dick just went and brought it out in him with all his own mirth and gallantry and everything, and now it won't go back in.

"You better not be late at Christmas."

"Easingwold Railway Station, half two," Ellis says, very seriously. 

They're going to actually _meet_ at about three, although Thomas will be around before then. Just in case.

"Yeah."

Thank God they figured that one out before it happened again… In his first letter — he'd written the date and the time on it, because he'd penned it right after Thomas called him the first time and thought he'd like to know, which was _immensely_ charming — he'd gone into a bit more detail about the whole thing, what had kept him, that when he's not working (thus, when he's not on what may as well be an army schedule) he doesn't even bother keeping track of time despite always wanting to be early to things, and then a few weeks ago when they were getting their plans in order he'd said, _my sister always tells me a time in advance,_ but not just how far in advance, such that he gets worried about when he's actually expected and shows up earlier than he otherwise would. Good system. Thomas cannot for the life of him fathom it, how anyone who works in their industry can dither around like he must, but if it works for him then it works for both of them.

"Right," Ellis prompts, "clocks."

"Watches. Specifically."

"Clocks, but smaller."

"That's the point of 'em, yeah."

"How are you liking yours?"

It and its shiny attachment, which is the thing he's really asking about.

"Gotten pretty familiar with the outside of it, let's say."

Again, Ellis doesn't say anything, but this time Thomas thinks it might be one of those forgetting-you're-on-the-phone things where you smile or nod or something and don't realise the person on the other end can't see it.

Well, he hopes it is, at least. He hopes he's smiling.

"Anyway, if… if you were gonna open it up and change things out, you'd need… you'd need pieces that were exactly the right size, just like with anything else, and it's small, right, so you don't have any room for error."

He pauses.

"Not that you do when it's big, either, but the easiest way to fuck up a watch when you know what you're doing is to be off by a tiny fraction of an inch."

"This just speculation, or are timepieces a hobby of yours?"

Huh.

"Have I not told you?"

"Er, I guess not."

"Dad was a clockmaker."

"Oh."

"Yeah. I could've been an artisan," Thomas says, far more casually than he feels, because they both know that's not the whole story — Dick knows about him and his father, even if he didn't know this. "But it's about as current a profession as service, these days, so I'd've ended up in the same place in the end as far as being employable's concerned – "

"Probably wouldn't have me, though."

"Yeah," says Thomas, once he can think again — because he couldn't, for a moment there. "So be grateful I wasn't."

_Because I am._

And then, before Ellis can say anything more and before he gets all twee over it himself, he says, "have we ever had a conversation where we stuck to talking about one thing?"

"No," Ellis says, lightly. "Do we need to?"

Thomas bites at the inside of his lip and actually thinks about it. "Can we, in this case?"

"I think that'd be best, yeah."

Nice when they're on the same page.

Which is most of the time, oddly enough.

"I thought of it like that, though," Thomas says. "Like they kept trying to put in pieces that were almost right to replace the ones that… worked until they didn't. Close enough, so long as they kept the numbers at official regulations it was fine, right. Even if it threw everything over and ruined the whole of it because one or two things were just enough different to do that. You can't just combine two different sorts and think it'll go down perfect on the first go without… without adjusting everything else to make room for it, but then if you do that it doesn't fit in the larger container, now, does it. Except in this case…"

He stops.

This is maybe going to be harder to talk about than he thought.

"I mean, we had nineteen privates get injured that first day, and they replaced them with ones out of Somerset, is the point, and – er, I was corporal, so I had to know everyone, and I sort of hated them coming in and moving everyone around even if it had to be done. Had to learn everyone's bloody names again."

"What a trial," Ellis says, sarcastic.

Thomas isn't as annoyed by it as he feels like he could be, so he ignores it.

"But it was like… even with, er, cogwheels and gears, sometimes it isn't gonna work, or it shouldn't work, but… it almost does. It doesn't get stuck until halfway around, or something, to keep up the metaphor. So we did all right for a while. But yeah, he… Darby was in my subsection."

Thomas takes a deep breath.

"And then he was on my team for stretcher bearing."

Because they had the best junior officer in the world.

"Groups of four, plus me and our lieutenant, who may as well have been in with ours. I think he would rather have been, seeing as he neglected everyone else; he even said as much. We all got on well enough."

At this point the words are just sort of coming out of his mouth without his having to think about them, and there's nothing he can really do about it.

"It was like having friends, really, which I didn't before. Not since I was a child. But me and Darby, we didn't even know each other as long as I've known you, before…"

Not before he died, before the other thing, but he's not about to say _before I went and got my hand shot_ in a telephone call.

"Oh," Ellis says. Probably thinking the former.

He did die, though. Not a mistake worth correcting.

"No happy endings, remember?"

"Guess not."

Thomas pauses.

He takes his watch out and holds the fob piece in his hand.

"You need to tell me if – "

"I will."

"Yeah, Dick, you say that, and then you don't do it." It's a little too harsh, maybe, but Ellis interrupts him before the apology's halfway out of his mouth —

"I do that with everything, don't I?"

 _I love you,_ Thomas thinks, startling himself. It's not for the first time in the last month, either, but he's not about to say it aloud. Far too soon, for one thing, he doesn't really know the difference between love and infatuation and it's barely been five months, and for another, it ought to be face to face when he _does_ say it.

"You could put it that way."

"But you like me regardless."

"Like you for it, in fact, if I'm honest — er, I'm going to just keep asking if you are."

"That'll do."

He sounds tired about it, but if they're going to have this conversation, Thomas needs to be sure he's not going to end up a nervous wreck by the end of it, and there's only so much he can do when they're not right next to each other.

"Er, what I was saying, was he was… he was a good bloke."

Understatement.

"Figured he was, if you liked him."

"That's not going to be a pattern, Mr Ellis," drawls Thomas. 

Ellis coughs.

_I love you._

"…except where you're concerned, of course."

He's more the exception that proves the rule, though, really.

Thomas waits for him to say something; he doesn't.

So he goes on.

"You and him did have things in common, though, now I think of it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Thomas says. He's wondering how much he can actually say. "When I met him it was like… when I met you."

"How's that?"

How is he meant to put it into words?

"As if we'd already known each other."

It really was.

Again, Ellis is silent.

"You all right?"

"Yeah."

And then, nagging, "you last asked me that about a minute ago."

"Don't go all quiet on me, then," says Thomas, vaguely irked.

"I was thinking of when I met you."

Well, he can't be irked by _that,_ now can he.

"No surprise there," teasing a little, and Ellis huffs.

But Thomas is finding he actually needs to keep talking about this, now that he's started. "Can I, er… can I go on?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. Well," he starts. It's going to take some deliberating, in fact, sharing this story with the risk entailed in their chosen method of communication, but again, he… feels like he has to. Like it'd be disrespectful not to. "Erm, I've never talked about this before."

Not that he can remember, but he doesn't think he'd forget if he had — and he remembers what he'd actually gotten into on the occasion where he _might've_ forgotten, so this really must be the first time.

"I'll keep it safe," says Ellis, soft and reassuring, and Thomas wonders not for the first time who gave him the right to be so kind about bloody _everything,_ even the worst things.

"Been more than ten years."

"About time, then, isn't it?"

"I suppose."

And he takes a moment to focus on breathing before speaking again, gathers up his thoughts.

"So we met, and I thought… I wasn't exactly charitable, he was a bloody farmboy and all that, figured he was boring and sheltered, didn't find it very impressive — older than me, though, actually, he was twenty seven, I think. Maybe twenty eight by the time he died. Farmhand, I should say."

"Doesn't really matter how old he was, though, does it? We were all children in the trenches."

Christ.

"You come up with that yourself?"

Ellis hums.

"…don't remember hearing it anywhere, so I must have."

"Right," Thomas says, feeling vaguely stupid. "Anyway, er, he'd actually been trained up to be a groom, wanted to do something with that, and he ended up a plain old stretcher bearer. Him and the rest of us."

"Plain old," Ellis repeats. "You lot were the bravest men on the battlefield."

Thomas sucks on his cheeks, then bites them, because he _really_ wants to avoid biting his head off for saying it, but… 

"Sure you hate hearing that, knowing you, but we all thought it."

"Yeah," Thomas retorts, "everyone did, and everyone _says_ it, but we were all bloody terrified and most of us hadn't any fucking idea what we were doing, and – "

And Ellis doesn't even falter.

"That's why."

"God, I don't – this – "

Why is it _this_ that's affecting him so much? It's out of nowhere. Of all the things he's said tonight, there's no reason for that to be the thing sending him off the deep end.

"Just… give me a second," he says, and he sets the receiver down and presses the heel of his hand up against his eye, tries to breathe. His heart is pounding.

He wishes more than anything that they could be in the same fucking room while they have this conversation, that they could even just touch or at least look at one another. He's always _needed_ that, someone's hand to hold or something, and he hardly ever gets it — they actually did hold hands in the car, back in July, him and Ellis, when he was a mess over being in jail in just the same way he's a mess now over what it was like on the battlefield, and… 

Well, he'll have to just hold tight to that memory, he supposes.

Enough time passes with him just sitting there that he starts to worry maybe Ellis dropped the call.

Thomas picks the telephone back up.

"Hello?"

"I'm still here, Thomas."

"Sorry."

"Don't be."

"Shouldn't get to me," he says, doing his best to sound easy and unaffected, like Dick somehow manages to do nine times out of ten, and he's _maybe_ succeeding. He doesn't usually have a problem with coming off like he's above it all, or at least, he doesn't think he does, but for some reason his walls don't stay up when it's just the two of them. Even if it's only over the phone. "Seeing as it's been more than ten years."

"You and I both know it doesn't work that way."

Maybe because his walls had already been reduced to rubble by the time they got to understand each other.

"Yeah."

And now he feels guilty, because how is this going to make _him_ feel, if he's complaining about mild discomfort being uncalled for?

"Are you still wanting to talk about it?"

"Yeah," Thomas says again. "I do, er, what was – "

"When you met," he prompts.

"Yeah."

Deep breath.

"By the time we got to talking I figured I might have to reconsider what I thought about farmboys."

"Oh?"

"Not that I did," because this is not a heartwarming tale of him changing his ways and combatting his deep-seated city prejudice or something, "but I at least thought about it."

Ellis laughs.

"What was it about him?"

"I don't know," Thomas says, truthfully. "I never gave it much thought. Had other things to worry about."

"Yeah."

"But he wasn't an idiot, that was for sure."

Ellis laughs. "Can't imagine you'd go after an idiot."

Well, at least he thinks highly of his taste in men.

Although, as before, he does have a reason to.

"You'd be surprised," says Thomas dryly. "But, yeah, er, he was sharp and well-read, and you couldn't say that about most of them, so there was that. Knew the Bible like he was a bloody priest."

"I know the type," says Ellis, evidently cautious, and Thomas shakes his head.

After having an I-am-on-the-telephone moment himself, he says, "he was an atheist. Didn't know the meaning of the word 'guilt'."

Part of why they'd got on so well. It was refreshing.

"Good thing, too," Thomas adds. He pauses, though, licks at his lips absentmindedly; he's stuck on the way Dick had phrased it — _go after._

What with Miss-or-Mister-Operator possibly hanging about… 

"Probably had all the women in the village after him back home," he says, settling, and Ellis clicks his tongue in a way that makes Thomas think he understands, "but he wasn't married to any of 'em, and he was… happy about it."

Incredibly attractive, and incredibly self-aware.

 _Too_ self-aware.

"Luck would have it, we each had leave scheduled about the same time, had a couple of overlapping days about a week after the offensive started, and…"

…this was how he got into talking about this in the first place, wasn't it.

"They weren't letting everyone take it, seeing what was going on, probably thought we'd all make a run for it, but you don't get much when you're enlisted and Mar – Lieutenant Wheelock made a fuss about getting everyone under him time off when it was allotted, so we got lucky there, too, having him in charge."

And then he pauses.

"Don't know why I bothered to call him Lieutenant when it's only you I'm talking to."

"What was his name?"

"Marion."

He hasn't said that out loud in ten years.

"And Darby's?"

"John."

Which was why he kept calling him Darby even after they'd shared a bed. There were about ten Johns around at any given moment.

And plenty of Thomases, too, for that matter — no one ever really used Christian names, though, Marion was special.

"This is the lieutenant you mentioned?"

"Yeah. Nice chap." Dead.

"He have much in common with you and Darby?"

_Why does that matter?_

— and then he realises.

"No," Thomas says, "but he was… he saw it our way."

Him and maybe two other people he'd met in the war.

"That makes a difference, doesn't it."

"Yeah, it does."

"He didn't get you time off on purpose, did he?" asks Ellis, no small amount of wonder in his voice, and it makes Thomas laugh.

"No. God. No, we were still putting on an act of being at each other's throats — er. Well. It wasn't an act. Or at least mine wasn't. I mean, I liked him by that point, more than I should have, got bloody obsessed, actually, you know how I get, and we traded insults for cigarettes and whatnot. Keep in mind it'd been maybe three days, if that. And we didn't… know the important things about each other."

"I see."

"But we came to."

"In Paris."

"Yeah." Thomas swallows down the sudden bad taste in his mouth. "And that, Mr Ellis, is why I know how to ask for a hotel room with two beds in it."

For show, although looking back the housekeeper knew exactly what they were getting up to.

"And then, er, I tried to get better at the language, in case the war ended by Christmas and him and I got to have a pretty little life in the country together, the law there being what it is – "

 _Careful,_ he realises, and Ellis says, "the whole of my section seemed to think they'd marry French girls, too," and if anyone _is_ listening in and they're not stupid then none of this is going to matter, it's damn obvious what they're trying to hide, but it makes both of them less anxious if they at least _pretend_ they're being cautious.

Whether or not they actually are.

"Lasted til October," Thomas says slowly. "They shuffled us around again. Just the Field Ambulance, I mean. I, er, ended up doing a bit of time manning a CCS without him, and in the meantime…"

"I'm sorry," Ellis starts, but Thomas doesn't let him finish —

"No, it's… he didn't… I just met someone else. And then when they put me back in the trenches…"

He exhales. 

"Hated being there again so much I forgot about everything else, I guess. Looking back I might've stuck it out, seeing as there were only a few weeks left of the worst of it at that point, but…"

There's a lump in his throat, remembering what it was like, even ten years out some of it is just as clear as if it'd happened yesterday, and he doesn't say anything more because he can't.

But Dick's not saying anything either.

"Sorry," Thomas says suddenly, realising this, his voice coming back to him in the face of fucking something up again, "I didn't mean to – "

"I'm not fragile, Thomas," returns Ellis, not unkindly.

Thomas turns the piece over in his fingers, glides his thumb along the crescent of the moon — he's just been holding it since he got it out, and he only remembered because his hand's just now started to cramp.

"You're not very talkative, either," Thomas hints.

And Ellis makes a noncommittal noise, lets out a sigh. "I thought you'd said he died."

Oh.

"Yeah. After I got back to Downton."

"Must've been rough on you, not being there."

He really bloody gets it, doesn't he.

"Yeah, he… he took his own life."

The way Ellis inhales, long and sharp, makes Thomas nervous — _this is normal,_ he wants to say, _it's only bloody suicide,_ like it happens every day, but whatever part of his head that thought came from is where it needs to stay put.

He wishes the mere idea of such a thing was still a shock and affront to him.

"At least, I think he did. Wasn't too clear."

"Suspect it wouldn't be," Ellis says, in a careful, dark tone of voice, like someone's overhearing him tell a secret.

(Someone might be.)

"I mean, I know he got injured. Lost a limb or something. And then he died, but it didn't seem like those things were related, er, physically, I mean, and he was depressed since the day I met him, so I figured…"

He knows he was right, too. Somehow.

"Yeah. Er. Three men I knew killed themselves in six months. December to June."

And two of them, in one sense or another, were farmboys from Devonshire.

Nothing, but Thomas doesn't prompt him, this time.

"Might be fragile after all," Ellis says eventually, and again, for the millionth time in an hour, Thomas wants to hold his hand.

"Don't think it's fragile to be affected by this sort of thing," he says, more calmly than he feels. "I'd worry about you, if you weren't."

He worries about himself, after all.

Given what he put himself through.

He… hasn't shared that with Dick yet.

Thomas says, resolved, "you know what, we're not going to talk about this anymore."

A pause.

_If he argues about this…_

"Thanks."

That indeed.

"Don't let me do that in future."

"I rather wrangled you into it, didn't I."

Thomas doesn't quite know what to say to that, so he repeats himself: "don't."

He's not going to give in so easily next time, when he knows it'll get upsetting for either or both of them.

"Always easier to remember the worst of things, isn't it, Mr Barrow?"

"Yeah."

Something he's always hated. 

On the other hand, it's nice to know he's not alone in it, seeing as for years he'd thought he was broken — he can't remember an ordinary day from the war to save his life, but some things he recalls so clearly it's like he's watching from above.

 _We're not going to talk about this anymore,_ he reminds himself, and so after some seconds have passed with them only listening to the other breathe, he says, "you ever find that book you were looking for? For your niece?"

They'd talked about that last time, before the war had come up and Dick had scared the hell out of him over it.

There's a beat, and Thomas worries it was too blunt, the way he changed the subject.

But he answers him eventually.

"I did, yeah."

And then he adds, "you'd think it'd be easier getting ahold of things up here, but it took long enough."

"London's not all it's cracked up to be."

"I like it, all the same."

"You like it up north more."

Doesn't shut up about it, and so much as Thomas pretends to be annoyed by it, he's thrilled every time — Ellis has got real ties to the area, to York and Yorkshire alike; he has reasons to stick around that aren't _I moved here for a job seventeen years ago and don't have anything else_. For one thing, it's refreshing; for another, it gives him hope. And the way he talks about things makes Thomas more fond of it all, too, just knowing how he sees things.

Ellis laughs. "Maybe not where bookshops are concerned."

"People, though," Thomas says, trying to be coy, and again Ellis laughs.

He's back to normal, then — or, he's trying to come off like he is, but it doesn't sound all that forced.

"Speaking of people I like," he says, "I'm anxious to see you."

And he's so casual about it, too.

"Anxious is one way of putting it."

"How would _you_ put it, Mr Barrow?"

"Desperate."

More honest than he'd have liked, but he's honest with Dick about everything. No reason to change that now.

Certainly not after all they've just talked about.

Unthinking, Thomas adds, "I hope you still like me," and he doesn't have time to kick himself, because Ellis isn't one to skip a beat with things such as this: "Thomas, I like you more with every day that passes."

He feels all warm and fuzzy about it.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder," he says carefully, and when Ellis sighs, he quickly adds, "I'm going to miss you until we see each other."

No need to be all self-deprecating over it.

"You miss me anyway, don't you," teasing and cheerful. He's always so matter-of-fact when it comes down to it, but then, he has been since their first day together — their first _actual_ day together, _is that what you've found Mr Barrow a friend,_ that day, because before that they'd talked plenty and flirted a bit, Ellis far more than him, but it wasn't quite the same as it is now.

"Yeah," Thomas replies, "I really bloody do."

"At least I won't be in Norfolk?"

"That wouldn't make much of a difference for me, would it, seeing as I couldn't talk to you if you were there, either."

"You'd be surprised," says Ellis blithely. "I'm not always in the best of moods, after, but Windsor's all right."

That is a surprise.

"Why's that?"

"I don't know."

No need to dwell on it, then.

"Well, I can be a very cheering person, when I want to be," Thomas tells him.

"Don't I know it."

Thomas smiles.

And then, "it'll come in handy, I think. Come to think of it I don't expect to have a very nice time at Windsor this year, either."

Before Thomas can ask, he adds, "His Majesty's been taken poorly again."

"A whole lot of fuss, then."

"And not over nothing."

But he isn't sharp about it.

"Won't seeing your family do anything for you?"

"Yeah," Ellis says. "Yeah, it will, but it's bittersweet, of course."

He pauses.

"Christ, I'm spoiled, aren't I, not everyone gets to see their kin twice in a year – "

"Not in service, maybe, but everyone else does, I think," Thomas counters, "and you deserve more than that, anyway, given that…" He bites at his lip and tries not to sigh too loudly when he speaks again. "Given that they're there for you to see."

And if Thomas understands correctly, most years he only gets to see all of them once, if that, so seeing as this is double what he normally gets… 

"Yeah."

But even with just the one word he sounds torn up about it.

"It was… Charlotte, right, that you were – "

"Charlie," he says, already brighter. _Good._ "She's fourteen."

Thomas is so, so, so jealous over all of it, but hearing him talk about them, how happy he is, makes up for that.

"And the rest of them? I forget."

He hasn't _entirely_ forgotten, and he hopes Dick knows that, but the ploy works, gets him talking about nice things enough that when they're ready to let each other go thirty minutes later Thomas is confident their conversation's not going to leave him troubled and uneasy.

He wonders if they'll talk about it when they meet, all they've shared about the war and whatnot.

He hopes they don't.

"…goodnight, Thomas."

"Goodnight, Dick," Thomas says. "Ever yours."

"Devotedly."

They hang up at the same time.


	8. October, 1924

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **content warnings/notes:** death, ptsd.

Of all the people in town they chose _Carson._

Him, of all people. When was the last time _he_ set foot on a battlefield? When was the last time he dodged an artillery shell or carried a bleeding man on his back? What's that? Oh, never? Bloody interesting choice, then — add to that, since when was he the shining pillar of the community everyone was making him out to be? The man spent every second he wasn't minding Downton Abbey wishing he was.

Try as he might, though, Thomas can't be too angry about the decision, not here in the moment, at least. For his own sake. He already feels sort of ill.

But it isn't Carson's right, all the same. He doesn't know what he's talking about, not like more than half the men around him do. Not like Thomas does, and he's not about to pretend he's the most qualified man in Downton to give a bloody sermon over it, but he's certainly a better fit for the job than _Carson._

Carson didn't wake up this morning having dreamed about the trenches.

Carson didn't sit on his bed half-dressed for an hour this morning staring at his war medals and wanting to chuck them out of the window.

Carson didn't spend both his meals today unable to eat because he was thinking of every man he'd failed in saving out of the Richmond Division and wondering if he'd even recognise their names in marble that afternoon.

* * *

Some of them he does.

William Mason, obviously. And there's one he thinks was the chemist's son, two tenant farmers whose names he wouldn't have known at the time but does now, a groundsboy at the house, Mr Pattinson's nephew, the telegraph delivery boy Madge was sweet on for years.

People he knows from Downton Abbey, not from the trenches.

But there are twelve odd rows and two columns worth of men with "Pte" and "Cpl" in front of their names, three or four thrown in with "Lte" and "Cpt". Some from his division, some from neighboring ones.

He should remember, but he doesn't.

* * *

He wonders if he should say anything to Mrs Patmore, decides in only an instant that he won't. Waste of breath. If she wanted to hear commentary at all, she wouldn't want to hear it from him; he knows that much.

And he doesn't exactly want to talk to her, either, but he finds himself wandering back to the inlaid stone at the brick wall all the same, stands a few paces behind her, tries to ignore the sound of sniffling.

SACRIFICE, it says.

Thomas takes off his hat. Something about the propriety of holding it over his chest calms him, makes him feel like any of the other men out here this afternoon. Just paying respects in general fashion, letting all the care out at once and then never again until another, _proper_ occasion comes along at which to express it.

Well, he _is_ like them, in that respect.

They all keep it inside of them. 

He's lucky that he can, really. Just recently in London he'd had the privilege to be in the street while a motorcar backfired, and bloody hell did that seem to be a day-ruiner for half of the men around.

SACRIFICE.

He can read between the lines like anyone else.

Gunfire was what saved him, in the end, and though he may have walked to the dressing station in the dead of night escorted by his own fucking field ambulance and met some stern and uncertain sets of eyes along the way, that was the last thing he ever heard at the Front, and he heard it in a way he had some semblance of control over.

No bad associations there, in the end, or at least, not to the point he's a headcase.

Even now — _especially_ now, especially _here_ — he's aware it could've been the last fucking thing he ever heard at all.

In front of him, Mrs Patmore is met by Daisy and Mr Mason, and though the latter looks at him, curious, the three of them walk off together, the most serious he's ever seen them.

Thomas doesn't know if he's a coward or not.


	9. December, 1927

1/12/27

Dear Mr Barrow, 

Having just written the date in the corner I see now that it is the 2nd of the month, not the 1st. I endeavour to have this reply sealed in an envelope by the time it's the 3rd, although that strikes me as unlikely given the clock strikes midnight in a quarter of an hour. You'll have to forgive me the blunder. I am employed in the world's finest madhouse and I've not slept more than ten hours out of the past seventy-two. 

First and foremost I should like to apologise for that which you are well aware. It was unacceptable behaviour on my part. I refer you to the fact that I have had very little sleep in three days. Assuming you do indeed desire to continue speaking with me I can assure you that it won't happen again. 

To answer the question which I am sure burns in your mind, in addition to the obvious I have dressed each of the Three Graces and the Prince of Wales. If that is what you call "climbing a ladder" then yes, I've done it.

Don't be so impressed by my prowess and ambition when you've more in spades. Two months to Lance Corporal is noteworthy. Any promotion at all is noteworthy. I never earned one myself, although to be frank with you I never much aspired to. The duties weren't worth the wage increase. I did, however, manage a single GC stripe. I am unsurprised that you disqualified yourself from one by rapid promotion. Add to that, the more you tell me about Downton the more I begin to wonder if perhaps the estate and village both are in some other realm. No man in his right mind would ever look at you and think that you are incapable of anything, and I mean that very sincerely. You seem to distinguish yourself at twice the rate as the rest of us. Five years to Sgt, fifteen to butler and exceptional at both into the bargain.

Thomas, know that you are by far the most resilient man I have ever met in my life, you have always mattered, and you deserve a good deal more gratitude and recognition than I surmise you have received. I'll be reminding you of that until you stop forgetting it, and I'll have you know that I am very persistent.

By and by, as a matter of fact I do intend to look in on my parents soon, and I do not intend to let the grass grow under my feet with regards to arranging a rendez-vous for you and I. When my mind wanders it is more often than not to the business which you and I left tragically unfinished on our last meeting. Humbly I request that if you are uninterested in making an appointment you let me down easy and soon at that, or else I shall be overwrought with false hope insofar as to lose yet more sleep for anticipating all we might do if blessed with the time and place to do it.

Each day I thank God that as I live in the 20th century there are locks on the doors in the B. Palace servants' quarters.

Devotedly,

R.E.


	10. July, August, September, October, 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two short chapters. they have been sitting in my googledocs since january????????????????????????????????? i don't know why i haven't posted them yet. (perfectionism) (perfectionism is why)
> 
> expect more frequent updates now folks! also we're still handwaving half the war specifics/playing fast and loose with history because i set out to do that so that i didn't fall into the trap of perfectionism (see above) but now i'm reading all this medical corps history and i want to keep writing this shit and i might break continuity of this fanfic to make things more historically accurate by accident. just go with it nobody's paying me to write these things are they
> 
>  **content notes:** graphic death & violence

"Have we been hit, then?"

Corporal Wright spoke so casually, it was like he'd just come out of a bunker to see the aftermath, not like his leg had just been blown off… shock, and setting in fast, too, but soon it was either going to wear off or he was going to pass out, and Thomas didn't fancy having to cope with the former.

"Yeah," he said, supporting his head as he tipped morphine pills into his mouth. His hands, though shaking, did it on their own; his ears were still ringing. Wright swallowed without incident. "Yeah, we've been hit."

* * *

"It'll be over soon; we haven't got very long…"

Lieutenant Collins didn't seem to hear him, but then, Thomas didn't know if he was going to hear much more of anything at all: he'd been gripping his sleeve and sobbing into his jacket, and now he wasn't doing either of those things.

But there was still life in him yet.

Not enough to make a difference, not enough to make him worth saving, but enough that if Thomas kept rubbing his back and holding him close to his chest it wouldn't be quite so bad as it could have been… even if by so small an amount it couldn't have really mattered, when it was going so slowly as this.

* * *

"What's happened?"

Private Hargreaves was staring at his leg in horror; Thomas wasn't, because he knew if he even glanced at it he'd probably be sick. Unlucky, an injury like that. It'd almost be better to get shot, or hit with shrapnel… although if he did his job right, some surgeon someplace could probably put him back together without cutting off the rest of it, and that wasn't something you could do if a bit of you had already been blown off. Broken bones weren't nearly so complicated.

Even if they were broken like _that_ , all twisted and outside of the –

"On three," Thomas told him, "one, two – "

As he hoisted him up on his back and over his shoulders, Hargreaves screamed.

* * *

"That's it, sir, I've lit it for you, there you are."

Captain Shirley's lips did close around the cigarette when he held it up to him, at least, but he only managed one shuddering drag before he was babbling again.

"B-Barrow? But you're medical – where's T-Tay – "

And sometimes the only thing to do was to babble back. Thomas kept his fingers in place at Shirley's wrist as he spoke, but his eyes couldn't focus on anything at all: everything was smoke and mud and more smoke, and he was lying on his belly in a fucking shell hole waiting for a man to die. "Yes, sir, it's Corporal Barrow," he said, "and I'm right here with you, I've got your wrist; Taylor's just over there," in pieces, "we're only taking cover a moment. You did right getting him to safety, sir," wouldn't be long now, "you always know just the thing to do, and you did it."

"My – my br – Theo – "

"Lieutenant Shirley's just fine, sir," Thomas said, and if he didn't know for certain it wasn't really lying, was it? "Theo – Theo's fine," his eyes weren't open anymore and now was when it started to _matter_ what words came out of his mouth, when it mattered the most, at least to whatever bloke he was with at the time, "he loves you, sir, and he knows you love him, he wouldn't want you to worry, would he, sir? He's a brave one just like you are, just like his big brother, learned from the best he always says, you did right bringing that one up, Captain, anyone should be so proud — "

Thomas took a deep breath.

He let go of Captain Shirley's wrist and rolled over.

Next to him Whitney had his arms up over his head, face only partway visible, but his eyes were open wide and he was breathing and there wasn't anything seeping anywhere or not attached where it was meant to be, so Thomas assumed he was in the best shape he could be for the circumstances.

"We'll come back to get them when it's dark," he told him.

Whitney only nodded.

And they _would_ …

If they ever made it back to the trench in the first place.


	11. August, 1916

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the 2nd of two new chapters!
> 
> dialogue only.... we're experimenting with narrative techniques in this fanfic as we have been

"How does he do it?"

"Do what?"

"The way he talks to 'em like that as they're dyin', how does he do it?"

"Reckon you should be asking him about that — oi, Corporal Barrow!"

"If I'd known I'd have to teach a lesson on it anyway, I wouldn't've bothered to demonstrate."

"Oh, fuck off, it weren't a stupid question – right, Williams, there's your lighter back – "

"Watch it!"

"Ta. What're you all on about, over there?"

"Dead people."

"And if you lot won't fucking shut up about them could you at least keep your bloody voices down – "

"Yeah, some of us've got girls to think about – "

"Corporal Barrow's got a natural charm with the dead and dying, Parker, that's all there is to it."

"Why, Darby, I didn't know you found me charming."

"Said with the dead, not with the living – ow, you fucking – "

"I'll remind you that I'm your superior, _Private,_ thank you."

"Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!"

"You are lucky we need all the men we can get, I'll say that. Look, so long as you pay attention and you've got a heart it's not hard, you're only telling them what they want to hear."

"But how do you know what's it they want to hear?"

"Well, that's where the paying attention part comes in handy, now, isn't it."

"Easier if you knew the bloke."

"Bloody hell, Riley, you don't let the fuckin' grass grow – "

"Yeah, well, nevermind that, you happen to find yourself in doubt, assume the chap misses his mother and that'll get you far."

"What if he don't?"

"You tell him he's a brave man and he did the right thing."

"What if he's not?"

"How's that for a stupid question, Tucker? – it's none of your concern if he is or isn't, you tell him that he is and that's that."

"But what if — "

"Then you bloody lie to him, Parker, because he's dying _._ I'm sure you've got years of experience, use them. Now everyone shut your fucking mouths and go to sleep."

**Author's Note:**

> find me as [@combeferre on tumblr](https://combeferre.tumblr.com)!


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